


Les Guignols, avec Musique Occasionnel (Puppets, with occasional music)

by Cephalopod



Category: Homestuck, Le Comte de Monte-Cristo | Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 04:24:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/845281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cephalopod/pseuds/Cephalopod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the style of Dumas; a lewd projectionist of suspicious affluence calls upon the Viscount Strider in the middle of a stifling Paris summer to ply his trade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Les Guignols, avec Musique Occasionnel (Puppets, with occasional music)

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: 
> 
> “Ah, lips that say one thing, while the heart thinks another,”  
> ― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

And so it came to pass that in the summer of that great year, when the heat was especially profound and the grand manors of Paris so vacant in favor of the seas to the north or the mountains to the east, that a curious person called upon the Viscount S_____ who had remained, it seemed, solely for the pleasure of being the only young man of note in the city. This person knocked directly upon the door and was admitted to the parlor though he bore no card and no one knew his name; this was not a thing that could have happened were it other than summer and other than tedious to an unconscionable degree.

The guest gave his name as Dave without a family name or title of any sort, and claimed the profession of _projecteur_. His shirt and cravat were of silk muslin fine as a breath and more dear by far, his coat bearing goldwork worth the cost of a fine horse. The Viscount's servants Scieriedent and Equerronde attended them with fruits and wine as cold as the cellars could provide as he demanded many answers of the visitor: where had he come from?

A strange land, said Dave, from over the seas that separate the world of civilized men from the world of dreams, where holly grew like flame and every mess out the back of an animal rose to don breeches and walk among men.

Whence his wealth? Had he holdings?

Dave avowed that he held many precious things, but none more precious or more often than his measure as a man. He had crossed his legs, posture easy, and lifted his glass for more wine.

And what of his craft?

Light and shadows, said Dave, light and shadows, and it was here where he had refused to go on while a smile grew across his narrow face. An uncanny one it was, far too knowing and with an excessive prodding of tongue into cheek even as he sipped at his wine and sucked at his fingers like a tradesman to clean them of the fruit.

“You mock me,” said the Viscount, without rancor.

“I do no such thing,” said Dave, “For in truth though it seem a sorcery there's nothing more to it than that. Send word to your friends, Lord--”

“Dirk,” said the Viscount. “Dirk will do. The Neapolitans say that titles melt in the heat; I'm inclined to grant they understand the matter.”

“As you like. Send word to your friends, Dirk. To anyone you like. I will beguile them too, here, tonight. Even the Viscountess—there is a Viscountess, surely?”

“There is not,” said the Viscount. “And few of my friends remain here. Your audience will be a small one, and one more inclined to swelter than to be beguiled.”

“All the better,” said Dave. “The tales my projections serve are ones well-suited to the heat.”

The Viscount swallowed a piece of muskmelon with a thoughtful look at his visitor, and elected to press no further.

Preparations began immediately. Dave's case was brought in and a cunning drapery erected in a sitting room unused much of the year as he set to work behind it assembling the most ingenious machinery. The remainder of the Viscount's day passed agreeably in solitary pursuits. Equerronde bore invitations to the peers who remained in town, instructed to reveal nothing of what the evening would hold—for what was there to tell?—and as the dim of the evening crept in bearing no coolness with it, an array of cabriolets behind weary foam-necked horses came up the drive to admit a trickle of guests.

The chamber Dave had chosen for the evening's entertainment was already stifling as they assembled. Windows had been thrown open long ago. The sky outside had grown entirely dark, the lamps and candles in the room extinguished as well—darkness reigned entirely, and in the small room's near-perfect blackness the press of bodies was an oppressing heat. Dirk sat on one of the cushions scattered about the floor, for Dave had caused the room to be decorated so, and tugged at the cloth about his neck. It had been damp with cold water to cool the blood. There was nothing for that now, and he cast it aside. Others did the same; there was a sound of heavier cloth piling to the floor behind him and Dirk was glad of the dark as he undid the buttons of his waistcoat.

Lights bloomed of a sudden behind the screens. Dim lamps bright in the dark threw shadows on the screen of thin cloth that hid Dave and his machinery. There was a curse, a clanking rattle of wood and metal, and...the shadows slipped into the forms of people and began to move.

“Gentlemen,” Dave’s voice intoned, his voice lewd. “and ladies. Sweet Brothers in the Hell of Geoffrey. A tale of war and passion, composed for your pleasure.” The room fell silent.

A clanking, strumming music of odd tambour and pitch rose and fell to mark the shadowy movements through gestures of wooing and violence. Despite the thickness and closeness of the air, there were laughs and soft exclamations at the cleverness of the artifice. Dirk shed his waistcoat entirely as the story went on and a trickle of sweat stole down the middle of his back. Judging from the rustles and the muffled grunts of effort behind him, he wasn't alone in this.

It was a delightfully foreign effect, Dirk thought; the shapes that moved as people and bowed to each other and raised their swords to each other were little more than filigrees with a human outline. The buttocks were enormous and the noses protruding in a way that seemed more suggestive than caricature. When the story took a turn for the tender, when noses began to dip toward buttocks and the breathing behind Dirk became more labored than the heat suggested, he was unsurprised. Had Dave made them? Dirk imagined, a little wryly, that he had.

And when the crank of the music sped to a clamor and the shadows combined into towering monstrosities with filigree penises the size of their arms—when they _mounted_ each other, he felt that he knew for sure.

There was a chuckle close behind him, and a weight on his cushion. “Light and shadows,” Dave said softly over his shoulder, “though more of the latter than the former.”

“I see that. How is it that you're here and not attending to the mechanism?”

“It attends to itself,” said Dave, shoulders rustling in a shrug. “As do your guests for the most part, though a few seem to have engaged help.”

Dirk looked back over his shoulder. Past the dim shape that was Dave were even dimmer patches of swift motion and the soft sounds of wet somethings. He leaned back, resting his weight comfortably against the other man. “When you said ‘beguile’,” he murmured, “what you meant was ‘inspire deshabille and subject to bizarre pornography’.” The shadow-creatures thrust and heaved.

“I did, in fact.” Dave’s palm smoothed past his hip to encircle a thigh and tug at it, sure as a sailor on a hawser. “I note that my little mechanism has failed you.”

“To hell with the mechanism; I’m impossibly curious. Why all this? Because it amuses you?”

“Because it amuses me,” Dave said. “Understand that the show itself means nothing; those shadow creatures could be two fawns gamboling in perfect innocence and the self-abuse that surrounds us would surround us still. The _expectation_ of prurience leads one to experience it in the mundane, nothing more complicated than that.”

Dirk laughed. “Why the cocks, then?”

Dave made no answer for a long while.

“Well,” he said, finally. “I _do_ like them.”

“In that case,” said Dirk as he turned to embrace him, “Beguile all you like.”


End file.
